Celebrating the best in children's storytelling and illustration

Please, Open This Book! by Adam Lehrhaupt and Matthew Forsythe

Who doesn’t like a bit of metafiction? In Please, Open This Book! a group of quirky monkeys do their best to convince the reader not to close the book for fear of being trapped (once again) inside the pages. They plead. They bat their eyes. They offer bribes (a bruised, half-eaten banana — “The other half was tasty”) and even to change the story (“It will be a good story” — an anguished gorilla sits at a typewriter amid dozens of discards all covered in one word “Banana”). They even turn to threats (“You could get stuck too. Did you think about that?”) and name calling (“Don’t be a book closer” — an insult that has captured the imagination of our household). Inevitably, the monkeys fail. The book is closed. Hope is not lost, however, as there are small print instructions on the back cover as to how to rectify the situation (“You can fix this. Flip it over and…”).

This book has never only been read once in a sitting in our house. We can (maybe) get away with reading it twice, but never fewer times than that. We’re not complaining though. Luckily, the dark wit of Matthew Forsythe’s illustrations delight adult and child alike.

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About Stephanie Cummings

Stephanie Cummings is a former BBC Journalist sharing her lifetime love of children's literature and illustration with her two young daughters -- and now with you, too, through Two in a Tepee.
Stephanie has an academic background at the undergraduate level in literature and has master's degrees in both anthropology (material and visual culture) and design. She started her professional life in an art gallery and ended up producing radio programmes for BBC Radio 4, before deciding to become a stay at home mum. She lives with her handsome husband (who is sometimes invited into the tepee) in leafy north London.